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Paratropes phalerata is a diurnal cockroach that lives on live plants. In some literature has been cited as an important pollinator :-)

I've been trying several ways to keep them... At the beginning I've tried to emulate an habitat with the same plants I usually find them on. But it's been a little tricky and not necessarily better in captive breeding. So at this moment I'm keeping most of the groups I have in small boxes, with good ventilation and moist substrate, and barks for them to perch on, just to keep looking for the best way to breed them (Different foods and that stuff)...

They like sweet fruits like mango... ;-)

I already got some oothecae, they stick them to... anywhere hahaha

Sticky side: ;-)

But this one on the plantae is really how they lay their oothecae in the wild:

As I said before... barks seems to be just fine :-p

Incubating eggs apart:

Some other pics :-)

This is a perfect display cockroach!!! is really funny to watch them walking around the boxes and kind of communicate each other by touching their antennae. They are visible and busy during most of the hours of light, but not like looking for an escape, rather just wandering around the barks and soil. Sometimes I watch them taking a determinate route and taking a bite of food in every lap

Next step: A big planted terrarium for all of them, with dishes containing pollen, sweet fresh fruits and some other foods with high flour content

¿Has anyone of you breed these before? Your suggestions would be very grateful :-D

So beautiful! @wizentrop thinks they may need live prey in their diet, as he's seen one eat a prey item himself, from what I can tell no one has ever actually bred these successfully though. Seems the main problem is getting oothecae to hatch, like their relatives, Megaloblatta and Nyctibora, along with a lack of knowledge about their dietary needs. Keep us updated on yours, would be great if they could thrive on a fruit diet!

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Fantastic stuff. I've had Paratropes for a while (not this species though), and I agree with the idea of offering pollen - they seemed to like nibbling on it. I have also had success with giving them beetle pupa. You wouldn't expect them to take on prey but they never refused. Like @Hisserdude said, the bottleneck for me was hatching the oothecae. I did not get enough of them so I could not experiment properly with different conditions required for hatching.

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So beautiful! @wizentrop thinks they may need live prey in their diet, as he's seen one eat a prey item himself, from what I can tell no one has ever actually bred these successfully though. Seems the main problem is getting oothecae to hatch, like their relatives, Megaloblatta and Nyctibora, along with a lack of knowledge about their dietary needs. Keep us updated on yours, would be great if they could thrive on a fruit diet!

WOW!!! Thank you very much for the tips!!!

@Hisserdude Ohh... Yes, my personal experience it's been the same, I don't have any Megaloblatta or Nyctibora nimph yet... but several oothecae waiting and waiting . But the good news is I've got Muzoa sp. to hatch :-D So maybe they are not part of the subfamily curse haha... Is very sad to know Paratropes genus does :'(

2 hours ago, wizentrop said:

Fantastic stuff. I've had Paratropes for a while (not this species though), and I agree with the idea of offering pollen - they seemed to like nibbling on it. I have also had success with giving them beetle pupa. You wouldn't expect them to take on prey but they never refused. Like @Hisserdude said, the bottleneck for me was hatching the oothecae. I did not get enough of them so I could not experiment properly with different conditions required for hatching.

This is fantastic information... I will try it right now :-)

Yes... you would not expect them to be predators! They seems to have very weak jaws, something for flower nectar and that stuff haha... I've tried offering raw meat at the beginning and they just ignore it, I've tried this because is really appreciated for my Megaloblatta longipenis.

@Hisserdude Ohh... Yes, my personal experience it's been the same, I don't have any Megaloblatta or Nyctibora nimph yet... but several oothecae waiting and waiting . But the good news is I've got Muzoa sp. to hatch :-D So maybe they are not part of the subfamily curse haha... Is very sad to know Paratropes genus does :'(

Well I really hope you are successful in breeding them, keep us updated! I'm particularly interested to know their specific dietary needs, and any information on getting the oothecae to hatch successfully would be an amazing contribution to the hobby!

13 hours ago, wizentrop said:

I have also had success with giving them beetle pupa. You wouldn't expect them to take on prey but they never refused.

Oh, so just mealworm pupa would work? I was under the impression they ate more active prey, like flies or other cockroaches. That's really good to know!

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Fantastic stuff. I've had Paratropes for a while (not this species though), and I agree with the idea of offering pollen - they seemed to like nibbling on it. I have also had success with giving them beetle pupa. You wouldn't expect them to take on prey but they never refused. Like @Hisserdude said, the bottleneck for me was hatching the oothecae. I did not get enough of them so I could not experiment properly with different conditions required for hatching

On 16/1/2018 at 10:55 AM, Xenoblatta said:

This is fantastic information... I will try it right now :-)

Well, I've already tried and... ¿Do you maybe remember the species of Paratropes you kept?

I've tried offering Nauphoeta cinerea, Gryllus cf. bimaculatus and Tenebrio molitor (pupae and larvae) in different presentations= Sizes and... I don't know how to say it ¿vitality? haha I mean... I've offered dead, wounded (crashing their abdomen to keep some movement, but making impossible for them to flee) and live healthy preys.

And well... in all cases with healthy preys they where not interested at all, except with T.molitor pupaes, for they were biting them... taking some distance when the larvaes started to twist.

With damaged preys... they were curious and feeding on all of them...This as long as the prey don't do any aggressive movement. And this is why I've tried with completely dead preys :-)... In this case there was an even better response, showing a certain preference for N.cinerea nymphs. But it seems like prey size does not matter too much, more determinant was the position of the prey, because in all the times they preferred feeding on the ones that were flipped (I mean... legs up), I guess looking for the most fragile areas to start feeding on.

On the other hand, they were not more interested in insects than they are in sweet fruits. At the moment seems to me like P.phalerata could be opportunistic (not predators), and dead insects could be a very good addition to their diet... and I will keep doing it, I have to say that is the first font of high protein they take from me.

Thank you very much for the data!!!

I'm still curious about the species you kept... maybe they have a more predatory behaviour

At the moment seems to me like P.phalerata could be opportunistic (not predators), and dead insects could be a very good addition to their diet... and I will keep doing it, I have to say that is the first font of high protein they take from me.

I have a hunch that they'd eat slow moving, soft bodied prey like aphids in the wild, so pre-killed or mostly immobile prey like Tenebrio pupae are probably the only captive prey they'll eat.

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@Xenoblatta when I said pupae, I meant crushed pupae, to give the roaches an easy "start". They did not respond to other "prey" for me. They definitely don't go after live and active prey, because they are not built for it. Yes, you can say they are opportunistic - will eat whatever they stumble upon. Want to see something cool? Try to give them bird droppings, most chances they will take it. Mine were P. bilunata, a bit bigger than yours, but I did not succeed with the oothecae.
Be careful with aphids as some feed on poisonous plants and are therefore toxic.

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@Xenoblatta when I said pupae, I meant crushed pupae, to give the roaches an easy "start". They did not respond to other "prey" for me. They definitely don't go after live and active prey, because they are not built for it. Yes, you can say they are opportunistic - will eat whatever they stumble upon. Want to see something cool? Try to give them bird droppings, most chances they will take it. Mine were P. bilunata, a bit bigger than yours, but I did not succeed with the oothecae.
Be careful with aphids as some feed on poisonous plants and are therefore toxic.

Good! I'll be careful with them... I use to find aphids over plants I already offer to my cockroaches :-)... and I'll add bird excrement to the "to do" list. If it works It would be a good excuse to start keeping chickens

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Could you possibly try keeping 1 or 2 ooths dry for about 2 months then hydrate them to see if they'll hatch that way?

This would presumably only work if the area has a dry and a wet season.

@Xenoblatta obviously has access to them in the wild, and I'm curious to know what specific conditions (temperature, humidity, seasonal changes, location, so on) oothecae and nymphs are normally found in, the more precise the better. Cockroaches: Ecology, Behavior, and Natural History (online for free) states that nymphs may ail/die in conditions adults seem fine in, for reasons I forgot. Trying to replicate the environmental conditions wild oothecae/nymphs are found in would prove useful for everyone if they were imported to the US in some distant future.